"Loss is a collaborative art..."

I am standing over my own baggage attempting to air out my laundry in the middle of the road. It is like I can know no different. Maybe it is how I cope. Maybe it is me lampshading. Maybe, if I can change or stop all the things I have done wrong or will do, this feeling will go away. This towering pile of guilt has loomed over me for as long as I could feel. Every time I think I've washed enough to give myself a moment of rest, something I forgot is stacked on top. And some of those things no matter how many times washed still smell like mildew.  It is as if I am addicted to it. My solution has been to meticulously monitor my relationships with others to cut off new supplies of guilt. But that causes other problems.

I had another batch of guilt dreams. 

More laundry is ready. One of the subjects has come across my mind a few times leading up to last night. I really wanted to tell them it was wrong how I vanished on them after all they did right. Oddly enough I believe this is one of the times things are better left unsaid. I don't deserve my apology to be the way I deal with the guilt of this one. Letting them forget and move past me without a word maybe is what they need.

 And the other is a person I never think about. I have been unpacking the part of my childhood she was in a lot this past year. Bible-thumping hoarders, I was at their house equal to my own in elementary. I've learned a lot about how these times have affected me into adulthood, and yet it isn't until now I am thinking about her. The little girl, a year younger than me the daughter, someone that saw me as their sister. She looked up to me, and what a mistake that was. There is a lot more there than I ever knew.      

 I hate the smell of my clothes, I can't get the stench out of my nose.